1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape printer for printing data on an adhesive tape attached therein and for feeding out the printed adhesive tape to the outside thereof.
2. Related Art
Tape printers capable of printing data on an adhesive tape have been practically put to use. In general, such a tape printer prints data on an adhesive tape which is provided in a cassette loaded into the tape printer and feeds out the printed adhesive tape to the outside thereof.
The tape printer must be constituted so that adhesive tapes having different widths may be used for printing data, in order to comply with various user's demands.
However, it is probable that a tape printer having such a constitution may produce printing errors where the data is printed out of the boundaries of the adhesive tape when the printing size of data to be printed is wider than the width of the adhesive tape. That is, it is possible for the user to designate a printing size wider than the width of the adhesive tape, since the printing size is capable of being designated up to a size corresponding to the widest adhesive tape.
If such a printing error occurs, a printing head is negatively influenced, since the printing head performs the printing operation on not only the adhesive tape, but also out of the adhesive tape. That is, the printing head is damaged, since the printing head carries out the printing operation on no object to be printed. Therefore, in the prior art, highly cumbersome operations are required for designating a proper printing size every time the adhesive tape is changed. Moreover, it is usually difficult to determine whether or not a printing error will occur until after the printing operation is carried out.